loja in the afternoon

it's still raining by the way. a steady if somewhat light sprinkle that has yet to let up since i got here yesterday. it's kinda interesting because during carnaval there is the wonderful habit of tossing water on people - or spraying them with the official "carnaval spray foam" (espuma de carnaval!) - and this just doesn't have the same impact when you're already soggy. i got hit by one teen today but most just look at me, see i'm a foreigner and leave me alone.

so the park... yeah, very crazy stuff. and an explanation - the title of the last blog "la un dry" should really be read the following way

la
un
dry

which is the name of one of the laundry places in cuenca... i don't think i'd take my clothes there though, i like my clothes dry.

and yeah, the guy from scotland - ian - who was sitting on the bus with me, starts to talk. apparently he's a landscaper and is travelling around ecuador for 5 weeks. he was stopping off in loja on the way south to vilcabamba where he thinks he'll stay for a week or so before hopping back home. weird guy if nice enough - he has this really soft laugh that sounds almost like air escaping a balloon and i have to make sure he's not deflating but actually laughing.

so we get to loja and decide to check out a few places together. although we chose different places we plan to meet up for a bite to eat and head on over to this place called Café Azul. i peruse the menu and see very few options (scratch that, one option) for me and then he goes and says that he's a veg (and 40 by the way, and before anyone smirks and says anything scandelous he's basically married) and winds up ordering mushroom crepes (ick). i get the "greek" salad which wasn't really all that bad - but the kicker is that we had beer on tap - apparently almost a given here in loja. interesting anyway. after that we head out and check out a few bars and just chat about ecuador and such.

this morning i get up (oh, yesterday my key broke in the lock so they gave me a new room for the night after using a hammer to pry the lock off the door so i could get my stuff (i feel very safe after seeing that)) and decide to find breakfast and so head over to the vegetarian restaurant. there's this guy there and he asks where i'm from and when i say canada he begins to talk in english and we wind up discussing a bunch of stuff about american politics (he was born in seattle), south african politics (interesting) and canadian and american foreign policy. an interesting guy if a little confused at times (i disagreed with a few of his observations), but we ended up talking for over an hour and a half. afterwards i headed on up to the park with the crazy replicas and such. now i'm just chilling for a bit before grabbing a late lunch early dinner. this has to be the slowest internet connection i've dealt with in ecuador as well - despite the optomistic sign on the window promising the quickest of connections.